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Daljit Singh: 'Luxury must become interactive to survive'

This article was taken from the July 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content bysubscribing online.

At first, luxury and technology <span class="s1">don't seem to be natural bedfellows. Luxe is defined by exclusivity, whereas tech is invariably mass market -- and although it doesn't always want to be seen, it still needs to have its output firmly felt. Luxury is designed to be conspicuous, sending out specific signals from the owner to the onlooker -- it has a material presence; technology is more discreet. Screen-based products are relentlessly updated and can't retain their value for as long as a tangible luxury product, which is perceived to appreciate in value over time. But there are parallels: they both embody craft, an inherent quality of material and design execution brought to life in an experience.

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They continue to transform our lives, but digital technologies are rarely acknowledged in the luxury world. Is this because there is less focus on the object and more on the experience, the value of which is harder to quantify. The question "Can money buy a luxurious interface?" has led me to wonder about the value of materials, and whether one could create new artefacts and materials that go beyond the notion of content, embedding technology and interface at their core to create a new type of luxury. It's beginning to take off in the digital-art field through watermarking and distribution, but my interest lies in how and when it will impact other, parallel industries. Luxury brands have an opportunity to back, build and nurture a new type of relationship between technologies and their respective crafts. To combine the two is to capitalise on the new wave of luxury and to push technology, interface and digital design into a wonderful dynamism.

Luxury also has the clear advantage of loyal followers who are willing to invest themselves, their money and their time.

This creates an extraordinary opportunity to push the boundaries. Luxury is an industry striving for superlatives across design, craft and production to create the ultimate products for a wealthy audience. So can money buy the ultimate interface? The answer is most definitely yes. It's a sector that can transform and innovate to create a new value -- products which won't be studded by precious materials, but will however become luxurious through the interactive experience or imbued emotional qualities.

From cars to televisions, interface is so often the dropped ball in luxury products. Why don't these objects benefit from a seamless extension of a brand's design rigour? The pleasure of these luxury products is often diluted by the inferior digital experience. The perceived luxury is in the styling of the casing rather than the functionality or interaction with it. This merely apes what a watchmaker might do, rather than celebrating digital design for the possibilities it opens up.

Digital designers can create beautiful interactions, which take much crafting to produce -- but they can't compete with a Rolex watch or a Cartier brooch in having "brand-plus-material" value. What if we could create products embodying a new type of value? Perhaps a ring with a single pixel instead of a diamond, or a watch with a black face that comes alive only to tell you to slow down and smell the coffee? If the pixel were from Google and the watch a partnership between Piaget and a notable interface designer, maybe we could create a new type of luxury. What if luxury were perceived as a surface that adapts, chameleon-like, to suit the mood or occasion rather than a traditional material that endures -- a kind of adaptive layer?

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The luxury industry could be an amazing protagonist and supercharge technical innovation -- exploring those high-end technologies deployed by the military and medical sectors to see how they could be transformed. As our computers become embedded into the fabric of our environments, we need to establish new design rules to guide them. Let's reconsider the dynamic surfaces R&D departments have been developing for years at a bijou scale. Let's explore how robust, exquisite code can weave sublime experiences into products and services in this most rarefied of sectors, creating a new value for luxury.

Daljit Singh has been working in the interactive design sector for 17 years and is now the executive creative director at Conran Singh, an interactive design consultancy (conransingh.com)